


Bitter as Coffee

by Hawkeye733



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Magic and Science, Modern Thedas, Speculation for the future of Thedas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-26
Updated: 2015-09-26
Packaged: 2018-04-23 09:54:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4872385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hawkeye733/pseuds/Hawkeye733
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aeda Lavellan, researching the Veil in a modern age where magic has slipped out of reach, bumps into a man who is more than happy to discuss her research. Unfortunately, their views seem to differ and Aeda isn't sure how she could have found such an inconsiderate, pompous, fascinating man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bitter as Coffee

“Well excuse you.” Aeda muttered under her breath as a man pushed past her, very nearly colliding with her in his earth shatteringly important need to leave the small coffee shop. She quickly caught the door before it swung shut behind him and stepped in, grimacing at the queue in front of her and the noise and bustle that battered her senses.

She hadn’t seen it this busy before. Not that Aeda had been here long, only a few weeks settled into her new job at the university but she had quickly found the pokey café with its squashed sofas, quiet music and friendly barista to be a perfect place to relax during her lunch hour. Of course, there was a break room at her labs but she still didn’t know too many people yet and when she wanted a relaxing lunch hour she liked to sit alone in the coffee shop, where polite conversation wasn’t expected of her. So her heart sank when she saw the next people leave the counter after giving their order, walking to the back of the shop and taking the last free table.

Sighing, she waited, smiled at the barista who was already starting to recognise her, and eventually ordered a hazelnut latte to drink with her panini. She had work to do this break, and the extra sugar was to help her plough through it, or perhaps distract her with a sugar rush. Writing papers hadn’t got any easier since she finished university.

Still, she thanked the barista, who had given her an extra stamp on her loyalty card to get this coffee for free and turned to survey the room slowly. In the time Aeda stood in the queue, nothing had become available. She walked to the back of the room, onto the small raised platform that some people might not know was there but still, all seats were taken. She huffed in frustration, looking more closely at the rest of the room and finally spotted one empty armchair, with a man already sitting on the opposite side of the table.

As she approached he didn’t look up, instead frowning down at the laptop in front of him, shaking his head just slightly in irritation at something he was looking at. She stepped into his line of view and put her hand on the top of the vacant chair. He still didn’t seem to notice her.

“Would you mind if I sat here?” She asked and the elf finally met her eyes. She was aware of the way his eyes flickered over the vallaslin markings on her face but she ignored it, as she was well used to by now. She had briefly wondered if he was Dalish himself, his bald hair leaving it obvious to all that he was elven but on seeing his bare face, her hope faded.

He nodded briefly, gesturing with one hand as he muttered “Of course.” Then he went right back to glaring at the screen in front of him. Paying him no attention Aeda sat, retrieved her own laptop from her bag and placed it on the table, inwardly sighing as the screen opened on the blinking cursor of her unfinished project.

With a more audible sigh she leaned forwards, grabbed her notebook and picked up where she had left the sentence. It had been some point about the change in recent activity across the Veil and she almost had it back, fingers poised over the keyboard, when the barista arrived to put her latte next to her. She smiled up at him, then scowled when she looked back to find her train of thought had been lost again.

She reached for her pen and flicked through the pages of her notebook, trying to find her notes on the spatial distribution of activity. Taking a sip of coffee, Aeda’s eyes scanned over the page and she found her inspiration. Smiling, her fingers tapped away at the keys, words flowing as she made her point concisely and intelligently.

Until she couldn’t think of the next point she had planned to make. She tapped her pen against her neck, bit her lips and closed her eyes in concentration when words just failed to come to her. When she opened them in frustration, she looked up and startled, as she met the blue gaze of the elven man sat opposite her, accompanied by a strange quirk to his lips.

She quickly looked away again, and frowned, wondering what he had been staring at. She only lowered her eyes even more, trying to fight her furious blush when she realised the probable cause of his amusement. If he’d been watching her for any time he would have seen the strange expressions she tended to call her ‘writing face’.

A soft chuckle made her look up with a defensive scowl. “I did not mean to seem rude. I only wondered what you might be writing that caused you such distress.” He spoke in with a lilting accent, soft enough that his voice just carried over the chatter across the rest of the room, a friendly smile pulling at the corner of his mouth.

“Oh it’s not…My mind’s just blanking on a word.” She smiled sheepishly in return, reminded again of the reason she didn’t usually write in public.

“Perhaps I might be able to offer some assistance, if you wish.” She glanced over at his computer, the blank back of the laptop gave her nothing to indicate what he was actually doing. Without knowing his interests, it was possible he might be able to help.

She weighed up her thoughts carefully, her tongue tying in her mouth as she tried to think of words that wouldn’t make her look even more of an idiot in front of this friendly, but undeniably strange, stranger.

“Well, it’s just, I’m trying to describe the ripples across the Veil, when the readings all go haywire.”

“You are writing about the veil?” The man leaned forward noticeably and the weight of his gaze fell on her.

“Yes, it’s what I do. Veil Physicist. Why, is it something you’re interested in?” She hadn’t come here for conversation - quite the opposite - but she had to admit she always enjoyed talking about her subject to someone that seemed willing to listen.

“You could say I have an interest in it. I believe they call it the…”

“Flux!”

“…Flux.” The term came back to her, then she glanced at him, abashed, as he spoke the word at the same time. “Sorry, it just came back to me.”

“Problem solved, then.”

She couldn’t help but laugh, lightly turning pink at the impression she was presumably making. “Not exactly, when I’m writing a paper and forget the name of the Flux.” She smiled awkwardly, then ducked her head back down to the laptop, wishing it was high enough to cover her face.

“If I may enquire, what are you writing about it?” She glanced up and to her dismay saw the elven man still watching her, a serene and expectant expression on his face. He seemed oblivious to her embarrassment and so she took a small breath, pushing it to the side. Most of her friends weren’t interested in the Veil and so if he was actually willing to talk about it, Aeda wasn’t going to turn away the rare opportunity to discuss her passion. This time, she gathered her thoughts before she spoke.

“I’m looking into the Flux across the Veil and measuring it, trying to figure out the relative positions of high activity, timing, recognising patterns or cyclicity in the readings.”

The stranger’s face had clouded over with a look of surprise and concentration, Aeda had grown used to other people immediately losing interest when she mentioned her work so she cut herself off and smiled instead.

“Sorry if it’s confusing, or boring, I know no one usually pays the Veil any more attention than just realising it’s there.” She tried to trail off but his steely blue eyes flicked back to hers.

“Have you found anything so far? The cause of fluctuations, related events?”

“Related events?” Frantically running through anything she’d heard of about the Veil affecting the world around it, she frowned. “Like what? The aurora? That’s only thought to be a discharge of energy, like static.”

“Hmm.” Aeda was only more confused when he seemed, somehow, disappointed in her answer.

“Did you mean something else?” She couldn’t help but prompt him.

“I was only wondering how you approached the effect of the Veil on magic, and its disappearance.”

“Magic? Why would …” That was certainly a new theory to her, and as far as she knew, it had no basis. “What makes you think the Veil had anything to do with the disappearance of magic?”

The stranger’s gaze seemed to harden as he looked at her over the top of his laptop screen. “You realise that magic comes largely from the Fade?”

“Yes, thank you.” Aeda’s tone sharpened in response to his incredibly basic statement.

“And the Veil is a barrier between this world and the Fade.” He spoke as if explaining something to a child and Aeda clenched her jaw. At that moment the barista walked across and put her panini on the table next to her. She barely gave him a distracted smile, then felt guilty as he walked away while she fixed her appraising gaze on the elf opposite.

“And the Veil has always been there, so why would it suddenly cut off magic when we know for hundreds, thousands of years before that into the time of the elves, magic existed healthily and naturally?” She was surprised and admittedly impressed when he seemed to have a reply waiting.

“There is so little known about the Veil except some readings of changes in its energy. An energy you have not yet been able to categorically identify.”

“We know it’s some kind of magical energy, something we don’t have the knowledge to understand any more. And if the Veil were held completely by magic, shouldn’t it be falling apart on this side, weakening like all the other magic here? There’s too much lost in history for us to understand it.”

“Now you are treating the Fade like it is another physical plane, as if visiting it were as simple as stepping through a door in the Veil and walking amongst dreams.”

“Well…it’s a place of sorts. And the Veil is a physical thing. It’s just simpler to categorise when we discuss it. From this side. Rather than going into theoretical discussion on what might be beyond the Veil.”

“And yet by pretending it is something that it’s not, you cannot get a true idea of what your findings are actually telling you.”

Aeda sat back in her chair, suddenly reminded her time as a student at university, being lectured for her strange theories and ideas. But now she was the one arguing the accepted theories, and he was still making her feel like she was being a fool.

“We barely know what the other side of the Veil is. The recollections of a few people’s dreams isn’t enough to change how we measure this side of the world.”

“So you discount it.”

“We use the knowledge we have and try to work out the rest, hypothesise and try, in our own ways, to find proof. What would you have us do?” She wasn’t sure when this became an us against them debate. She wasn’t even sure what point he was trying to make, although she was sure he had one.

“I was not trying to have you do anything. I was only interested in your methods.” She blinked, taken aback when the man’s tenacity suddenly seemed to diminish and he sat back in his chair.

“Sounded more like you were tearing apart my methods. And subject in general.”

“I apologise, I meant no offense. I only wonder how you can try to understand the picture when only have half the pieces of the puzzle.”

“Maybe you didn’t _mean_ offense…” Aeda began, before she thought better of herself. Deshanna would not approve of her manners. But she didn’t feel it was her that needed to apologise. “I don’t study the Fade, I study the Veil.”

“There are historical accounts that would fill in much of the missing information, you could read them for more discussion.”

“I have, I’ve always been fascinated but there’s…not enough. The Fade is described in those records with the understanding that everyone knew what it was like. They didn’t need to explain things, or when they did it was frustratingly vague and it just ends up tying your head in knots because it makes no sense.”

“Perhaps that reflects the nature of the Fade.” The elven man sounded oddly wistful and Aeda frowned at him.

“Well, whatever it is, I can’t use that to measure the Flux.”

“Apparently.” His disapproving tone was back again and Aeda clenched her fist under the table. This was proving to be a more difficult lunch than any she might have had by staying at the break room at work.

“I’m sorry I disturbed you. I’ll let you get back to your work.” She looked at the laptop in front of him, a twinge of curiosity running through her at what he was actually working on. She didn’t dare herself to ask. She glanced at her watch instead, startled that she just had time to pack her things away and walk back to the labs.

“Quite the contrary. It has been fascinating.”

“I’m glad someone enjoyed it.” Aeda muttered in a more acerbic tone than she ever thought she would use with a complete stranger before. She shoved the laptop back into it’s case with more force than entirely necessary.

To add to her frustration, the stranger seemed quite calm, amused even. “I wish you luck in your experimentation.”

“’Shiral.” She replied quickly as she slung her bag over her shoulder and walked away, not prolonging the conversation any longer than she had to. She walked from the café with an angry monologue running through her head. What kind of a stuck up, know it all asshole asks about her work then basically tells her everything she’s doing wrong? Before she even has time to explain. Before he can even understand what she’s doing with her discoveries about the distribution of the disturbances, or the strangely elevated activity of the Flux that she had been observing, building progressively over the last couple of years.

He didn’t know anything about it at all.

It had also given her more to think about than any conversation she’d had with her peers for some time. Enough that when she got home that evening, she went straight online to search out journals, papers, historical sources on the Fade, so she could read them again, trying to get a new perspective on their content. She also hoped that maybe by filling her head with thoughts of the Fade, she would be able to achieve one of those rare lucid dreams in the spirit realm that was so rare for anybody these days. Enough that some people believed it a fanciful myth.

The dreams that she was certain in some time, before magic disappeared from this side of the Veil, would have been just part of her abilities as a mage.

The next day she took her lunch break a little earlier and found it only slightly lessened the crowd in the café. But as she gave her order and looked around, a familiar profile caught her attention and her lips quirked into a small grin.

She enjoyed the way the elven man’s eyes widened in surprise as she took the seat opposite him once more.

“So, you wanted to talk about the Fade?”

**Author's Note:**

> [Solas approves]
> 
> So this was an idea i had ages ago, then I thought more about the Veil and the Fade and the Elven Quickening and the world evolved so i kind of planned Modern Thedas a few hundred years into the future. Which is why there is certainly more I could do with this fic
> 
> Of course my girl Aeda had to be a scientist, i'm far too much of a nerd. Let me know what you think for my first foray into Solavellan fic


End file.
